Editorial: Efforts to weaken FOIA are a mistake

Monday

Feb 22, 2010 at 12:01 AMFeb 22, 2010 at 10:19 PM

There was hope that the passage of reforms to Illinois’ Freedom of Information Act might someday lead to a new culture of openness in state and local government. It’s safe to say that culture change hasn’t yet started to happen.

There was hope that the passage of reforms to Illinois’ Freedom of Information Act might someday lead to a new culture of openness in state and local government.

It’s safe to say that culture change hasn’t yet started to happen.

The first assault on the new law came last month when the General Assembly exempted teacher evaluations from disclosure in a bid to capture federal “Race to the Top” funds designed to reward states that show a willingness to innovate in education. Teachers unions wouldn’t support the bill without the exemption. Instead of bucking a powerful special interest group and deciding the public has a right to see the evaluations of educators whose salaries it funds, legislators buckled.

But some legislators don’t want to stop there. There are at least six bills pending in the General Assembly that would roll back the new law or make it not apply to other legislation lawmakers are crafting.

These bills need to be stopped in their tracks. And Attorney General Lisa Madigan, who championed and received a lot of credit for the FOIA law’s rewrite, ought to be at the front of the line trying to halt such changes. The attorney general’s neutrality on the exemption of teacher evaluations makes us wonder about her commitment to making sure the new law isn’t picked apart.

One proposal would remove a provision that allows the public to have for free the first 50 pages of any public records request. Two separate bills would bar the performance evaluations of police officers and all public employees from disclosure.

Another bill, sponsored by state Sen. John Millner, a former police chief, would prevent from disclosure employee disciplinary records unless there was a criminal conviction and make the awarding of attorneys’ fees optional in cases where plaintiffs could show that governments improperly withheld records.

In short, Millner would return Illinois to many of the same secretive public records practices that were in existence last year.

Too many believe this is some kind of dirt-digging enterprise concocted by the Illinois Press Association and its members (this newspaper is one) to write stories and sell its products.

To be sure, FOIA is a key instrument in any reporters’ tool belt. But it’s only one of many. There are plenty of sources willing to dish “dirt” without a reporter ever filing a records request. They have had newspapers and TV newscasts for a long time in South Dakota, which had one of the nation’s worst public records law until reforms passed last year.

The question often is asked: Whose business is it how a public school teacher is evaluated? Or a police officer?

It’s the public’s business because it pays the bills. If a bar owner is rude to you, you don’t have to eat and drink there anymore. But if a police officer is abusive to you at a traffic stop, or the person who teaches your children comes into work drunk, should you just move or pay for private school?

The overwhelming majority of public employees are competent, conscientious and courteous. But as a taxpayer, shouldn’t you have the right to know if that cop has a history of complaints filed against him or her and what actions the police department took in response? Shouldn’t you get to know if the school district meted out any discipline to that teacher? Should you be your own watchdog instead of waiting for someone else to take up your issue?

The new act is as much for the public as it is for reporters. The public uses FOIA more than the media. In 2005, requests from the public to the attorney general for help at getting records outnumbered journalists’ request by more than six to one.

The introduction of bills that would roll back the new FOIA is interesting because only one lawmaker dissented in last year’s FOIA rewrite. It was a key component to the reforms passed last year in the wake of Gov. Rod Blagojevich’s arrest. Did legislators think that they could vote for FOIA reform one year and gut it the next? Did they think nobody would be paying attention?

If so, they were wrong.

State Journal-Register

Never miss a story

Choose the plan that's right for you.
Digital access or digital and print delivery.